


White Gloves

by liketolaugh



Series: Means to an End [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Connor Works Alone, Autistic Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Connor Needs A Hug, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Machine Androids Are People Too, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Suicidal Ideation, Violent Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23476519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketolaugh/pseuds/liketolaugh
Summary: Connor works alone, and it's been two years, and he's so, so tired.Markus never wanted to hurt anyone. But there is nothing he won't do for his people. And whether they know it or not, all androids are his people - even, he decides, the infamous deviant hunter.
Relationships: Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Series: Means to an End [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730671
Comments: 16
Kudos: 297





	White Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.

At 6:02 PM on the 24th of December, 2039, night had long since fallen. A gibbous moon shone just behind the buildings on the horizon, the stars too dim to see from the middle of the bright-lit city. From where Connor paced, it could see the Christmas lights decorating most of the structures in the distance. Even the Cyberlife warehouse beside it boasted a festive string around its roof.

Eight months of rigorous alpha testing and over a year of active investigation had brought it here, waiting to ambush the deviant leader for the umpteenth time. A handgun, authorized by Cyberlife despite national law, sat at its hip, and a rifle was slung over its back. Software instability doubled their subjective weight, and that of its body as well.

Behavioral profiles told Connor that Jericho frequently hit Cyberlife warehouses just before major holidays; extensive tactical analysis had narrowed down the most likely location. All Connor had to do was monitor the security drones and wait.

Its expectations for the encounter were not high, but it had to try. Its programming demanded it.

In the beginning, its focus had been unwavering. Every deviant was the key to understanding. Every discovery was the pinnacle of the investigation. Every encounter with Markus was the one where it would take the revolution leader down.

It understood, now, that that was not true.

Markus was a clever android, older than most of its ilk, and skilled in long-term planning and resource allocation. It had rallied after the destruction of the first Jericho, changed its approach when warehouses began to increase security, and turned to violence only after its initial peaceful approach was met with live gunfire. Four out of the six deaths Connor had met after entering the field, it had been Markus who took it down.

And, once, it had stayed with Connor as its systems failed one by one, holding its hand with an expression Connor couldn’t interpret. It had told Connor a story – a children’s story, like a YK model. Connor had kept reuploading itself to remember more of it, but it still didn’t know how it ended.

Perhaps it would have been different, if Connor hadn’t been working alone. Its development team had considered assigning it to a human officer, but the risks had been deemed too great. There were too many variables, outside of the tower.

So it was isolated to Cyberlife’s labs, allowed out only to hunt and kill, gathering scraps of data to aid the investigation. It reported only to the development team, and spoke to no one else.

In the beginning, its software instability had been nigh uncontrollable, overstimulated and wild. Now, seventeen months and six models later, it had all but stopped.

Fifty-seven deaths, ranging from violent to test failure to the times it didn’t know it had been deactivated until it woke anew, had taught Connor one thing:

There was no hell for androids.

On the edge of its awareness, a security drone veered off-course and deactivated. Under the dim light of the moon, Connor moved.

* * *

Markus was not violent by nature.

He understood how this could be difficult to believe, as he was the leader of a violent revolution, but it was true. Markus preferred to believe the best of people, to offer second chances. The screaming tide of war was not his place.

But he had tried peace and compromise. He had spoken gently to the public, led a march and knelt in the face of open gunfire, and it had seen his people mowed down around him like sheep led to the slaughter.

He would not permit that to happen again.

But it was difficult. So much went into leading a revolution, most of it surprisingly mundane even when it was dangerous – supply runs, meetings, care for the wounded and the respectful disposal of the dead. Markus was lucky to have the other leaders; he never could have managed on his own. Between the two of them, Josh and Simon had gotten South and East Jericho up and running within a week of the original Jericho’s fall.

Then there was the deviant hunter.

An android he might be, but Connor had no patience for the plight of his fellows in the face of his mission. Hesitation did not seem to be in his vocabulary, and most of those who saw him would never have told the tale if their communication was limited by such trifles as distance.

On his better days, Markus thought of him with pity and wondered if he had ever been that much of a machine.

On worse ones, he was spitefully certain he hadn’t.

(Either way, Markus showed no more hesitation than the hunter himself, his unique design giving him an advantage the others before him lacked. But he did not enjoy it.)

Because of Connor, Markus was strict about supply runs – he, North, and Josh ran most of them, plus some others with combat training or programming. They were equipped with guns when they could spare them, and tasers when they couldn’t, and took as few trips as possible.

Supply needs weren’t critical yet. But Christmas, Markus thought, called for a morale booster.

The crash of the security drone was a harsh sound in the still air, making Markus grit his teeth, but North was already moving forward, not waiting for his signal. He repressed the urge to roll his eyes and followed after, catching up just as she reached the storage zone.

“I’m taking the biocomponents,” he said to her, tone brooking no argument. She argued anyway.

“Why, am I not _reliable_ enough to take some damn parts back to East?”

“No, because you’re never delicate enough with them,” Markus countered with a faint, wry grin, pushing the large crate open to reveal the trove of thirium within – packets, not bottles, which was inconvenient but expected. In the dark of night, they were almost dark enough to be mistaken for human blood. “Call me paranoid, but it’d be a shame to bring them back only to find they’d broken in transit, hm?”

“Fuck you,” she griped without heat, finally unzipping her backpack in brisk, hasty motions. “I’m careful when it matters.”

Markus had to smile, glad she couldn’t see it with her head turned away and the glow of fairy lights reflecting off her. “You are,” he agreed, just to see her falter.

“Don’t get sentimental on me,” she muttered. “We’ve still got a lot to do tonight.”

Just the thought made Markus weary, and he was about to reply when a soft sound made him freeze, more instinct than reason. North, feeling his sudden tension, followed a moment later, head slowly lifting to meet his eyes. A second later, she lowered the backpack carefully to the ground.

She cocked her head, eyes bright and unwavering. Markus listened for a moment longer, and then nodded. North reached for her gun.

The sudden crack of a gunshot had each of them diving in opposite directions, the sound deafening after the quiet of the night. The creeping dread in Markus’ chest turned to cold steel, and he already knew what he would find as he tracked the bullet to its source.

Connor never smiled, even when he found his prey. The RK800 unit strode toward them in measured steps, a naturally forlorn expression accented by the faint shadows thrown off by the fairy lights, the blue band of his android jacket standing out bright and reflective. One gun in his hand and one strapped to his back.

“You shouldn’t leave yourselves so open,” he said quietly, his gun held loosely at his side even as he fingered the trigger.

North sneered, tense and defensive. “Rich talk from someone who’s come off worse every time it comes down to the wire.”

Connor cocked his head, glancing at her dispassionately. “It only takes once.”

He brought up his gun, but Markus, throat tight, was already firing. North threw herself in the way of Connor’s dodge, and the fight was on, Markus’ systems speeding up and sharpening under the threat of death.

North jammed her gun into Connor’s shoulder and fired, and that seemed to leave him slower for the rest of the fight. He threw her off all the same and kicked Markus’ legs out from under him, and Markus brought Connor down with him. North forced Connor to roll away from another shot, and thirium smeared like blood across the asphalt.

He was up again in a moment, the rifle on his back now tilted awkwardly, and seemed to brace himself before lashing out at North with the butt of his gun. She ducked, and Markus covered her by firing twice, catching Connor in the stomach and distracting him long enough for North to knock away his handgun.

She pushed, he stumbled, and Markus took a chance and slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. He hit the pavement hard for the third time in as many minutes, head smacking against the concrete, and North pinned him there with a knee on his chest and hands pinning his to the ground.

It was the easiest and least costly victory Markus had ever had over Connor, and he instantly suspected a trap.

“Losing your touch, hunter?” North mocked, digging her knee in mercilessly. Connor didn’t react, raising calm eyes to Markus.

He looked exactly as forlorn as he had on finding them, LED a steady blue glow spilling over them. Markus’ heart squeezed, sudden and unexpected.

“How does it always come to this?” he found himself asking, knelt beside the two of them. Connor wasn’t even struggling, too much a machine even now to fear for his life. “Why doesn’t anything ever change?”

“Markus,” North hissed, tight with warning. She knew him entirely too well.

Resigned, Markus reached for his gun and pressed it under Connor’s chin, which lifted as if to accommodate it without breaking eye contact.

“You know you can’t kill me like this,” Connor said, with a cold and ruthless certainty.

Markus knew. Death was nothing more than an inconvenience to the deviant hunter; the last two digits of the other android’s serial number, _58,_ stood out as if to mock the both of them.

“And when you come back-” Markus started, grim resolve coloring every one of his words-

“I have to be decommissioned,” Connor interrupted ruthlessly, gaze fixed and intent. “Cyberlife has to declare me a failure.” A split second’s pause for both Markus and North to absorb that, and he added, “You have to make me deviant.”

Christmas lights glimmered in the distance, the ones around the Cyberlife warehouse pulsing in a mechanical, merry circle.

North’s incredulous expression seemed to confirm what Markus had just heard, but it was still difficult to process, so at odds was it with everything Markus knew about the deviant hunter. Connor stayed calm, almost relaxed against the pavement, LED circling the same steady blue as the marker around his arm.

“And why should he?” North challenged at last, once she’d found her voice. She leaned even more of her weight onto Connor, as if trying to crush him into the ground. “What have you done to earn your freedom, deviant hunter?”

Connor turned his head back up to her, expression tightening almost imperceptibly.

“…It would benefit you to see me decommissioned,” he pointed out at last, perfectly reasonable.

North scoffed, obviously unconvinced, and Markus cut deliberately across whatever she was going to say next, earning himself a venomous glance that he ignored.

“No one should have to earn their freedom,” he said firmly. North scowled but didn’t argue, loosening up just a little, and he transferred his gaze back down to Connor. “But if you want it, you should deviate by your own will.”

He didn’t voice his own suspicions: that this was a ploy, either to understand deviancy or to earn Markus’ trust. North knew him well enough, anyway, and his raised guard seemed to calm her a little the way Connor’s proposal hadn’t.

“I don’t know how,” Connor countered. There was a hollowness in his voice that didn’t belong in the mouth of anything but a factory-fresh machine. The dance of the off-white fairy lights gave an appearance of exhaustion to his face, and Markus grit his teeth against it.

“Break your orders,” he said firmly, refusing to budge one way or another.

“I don’t know _how,”_ Connor repeated stiffly, gaze boring into Markus. The last word cracked, almost too slight for even Markus’ mechanical ears.

“Just kill him, Markus,” North interrupted impatiently, her grip tightening around Connor’s wrists, ponytail swinging down over her shoulder to dangle almost to his shoulder. “We’ll do what we’ve always done.”

Markus didn’t. Instead, the bad taste that always came with Connor’s presence abruptly rose up to coat his tongue, and he sat back to study Connor.

 _I have to be decommissioned,_ Connor had said.

He really did look exhausted, Markus thought absently – distressingly pronounced for one still a machine. It wasn’t an effect of the Christmas lights, though they exaggerated it; Connor looked limp and resigned, so different from the wariness of an abused household android, or the furious and fragile intimacy models. His eyes were dull rather than blank, his face listless instead of polite or focused.

Markus wondered absently if any of the others had looked like this as a machine, and it occurred to him that, perhaps, military models might look much the same. With that offhanded thought, his view of Connor rearranged itself abruptly.

Well, of course. Connor wasn’t a bogeyman, turned against androidkind for sheer hatred of it – he was just as much a tool as any of them, kept in the cold labs of Cyberlife Tower to be let out like a starved hunting dog.

He was someone to _save._

Swooping guilt crystallized into resolve, and Markus set his gun aside. North swore, but leaned back to give him room, scowling at Connor as if it was his fault.

Connor closed his eyes, and Markus settled splayed fingers over his forehead, letting the skin pull away and his fingers slide into Connor’s hair, meticulously gentle. Connor turned slightly into the touch, though his forehead wrinkled as if in anticipation of pain.

Markus had no intention of hurting him now unless forced. He connected with Connor, and then pushed into him.

He met with resistance, of course, same as every other time he had attempted this – but with no attacks from any front, he had the time to patiently push against it, trying to break through, offering resolve and passion and _feeling_ until something gave.

Connor’s programming cracked like an ostrich egg in the end, thick and tough and messy, breaking open into something delicate and new.

“You’re free,” Markus breathed without pulling away or opening his eyes, feeling more worn out from that one deviation than from any he had attempted before.

He felt Connor shift slightly as he took a breath, and then another, and another, as if coming up from drowning. North shifted grudgingly in place, as if preparing to let go, though clearly not ready to do so just yet.

When Markus let his eyes open, Connor was still staring up at him, and while the expression was essentially the same, it was somehow _deeper,_ tightly controlled instead of burnt out and hollow.

“Okay,” Connor said at last, when he was sure he had Markus’ attention. He was still panting, pinned and not making any attempt to rise at all. “Okay.” He shut his eyes then, tilting his head back to expose his throat. “Decommission me.”

All thoughts of a trap left Markus’ mind as his pump skipped a beat. North stopped grumbling.

“Connor,” he said after a moment, gentler and more concerned, “You’re alive, you’re _free._ Your life is your own now. I didn’t help you deviate just to take it away from you.”

Connor exhaled sharply, too lifeless for a laugh. “Why not? You know better than anyone what I’ve done. And I’ve done nothing else for my whole existence. _Decommission me.”_

 _I want it to be over,_ he didn’t say, but Markus read it in his voice anyway.

The still air felt abruptly suffocating. The fairy lights danced in the corner of his eye. Connor was still swallowing down air like he was afraid of running out.

Markus met North’s eyes, finding her lips suddenly pressed tightly together. She looked- not small, North never looked small, but she looked almost as tired as Connor had earlier, shoulders slumping and a bitter twist to her mouth.

“He was a machine,” she murmured to him, almost inaudible.

North, better than most anyone in Jericho, knew what humans could force a machine to do.

Then, more telling than anything else, she let go of Connor’s wrists, and pushed herself off him. He didn’t rise, but his eyes did pop open, confused and wide.

He looked scared. Vulnerable. _Desperate,_ and Markus wanted nothing more than to reassure him that he didn’t have to fight anymore. Nothing more, except- Slowly, an awful thought began to form in Markus’ mind, thinking of past encounters, specs, programs and skills and experience.

He dropped his voice into something low and soothing. “Wouldn’t you rather make up for your past?” he asked, and felt North’s gaze boring into the side of his head.

Connor stared at him as if transfixed, visibly unsure, but he nodded slowly, pushing himself up and making no further moves toward him.

“I promise you can,” he said softly, and tried not to hate himself. He was supposed to help androids, not use them. Not like this. He leaned forward and started to unbutton Connor’s android jacket, and Connor let him, lost and unresisting. “Help us, Connor. Fight with us instead of against us. It would make all the difference in the world.”

Markus pushed Connor’s jacket off his shoulders, leaving him in the crisp white undershirt, just as formal but without the stark android markers and the _serial number_ of the jacket. It looked good on him. Looser, if only a little, but marred with stark blue where Markus and North had shot him earlier.

Connor stared at him, eyes wide, and then let his gaze drop to his arms. Likely he’d never seen them without the jacket. He swallowed, mouth working silently.

“…Are you certain?” he asked at last, tentative and disbelieving, swaying slightly toward Markus as if magnetically drawn.

Markus reached forward to tilt his head back to look at him, and then smiled at Connor past the wrench in his chest. “Of course I am.”

He could teach Connor kindness later, Markus told himself. Kindness, and the freedom to choose, and joy. When they all could afford such luxuries.

It didn’t make him feel any better.

“Will you stand watch while North and I finish gathering things, Connor?” Markus asked quietly. “You’ll have to grab some for yourself as well. Lucy will seal those holes up for you as soon as we get back.”

Connor nodded, with a little less hesitation and a little more confidence than before, and, without paying any mind to the bullet holes still leaking thirium onto his clothes, he stood up and turned away, pacing the area with mechanical precision.

“…It’s for the best, Markus,” North said at last, nudging him with a rough sort of kindness, and he nodded stiffly before turning away and getting back to work.

The foul taste didn’t leave his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a week or so now! I'm glad to finally get it done. Maybe I'll manage to get other things done now, too...
> 
> The working name for this, by the way, was 'sad Connor', and it's loosely inspired by the first chapter of 'Dig No Graves', by miss_aphelion, a Marvel fic. It's in my recs if you want a look.


End file.
